shit off

@tauon holy fucking shit i refuse to believe that UK is real. license to watch a free youtube that generates a profit off you?! what the actual fuck

@byte no no it’s specifically live tv channels being streamed on youtube. no-one in the uk does this

@tauon ah that's a bit better, but still what the fuck. people already paid for TV, and they need to pay a subscription to watch it even though it's absolutely infested with ads?

@byte @tauon The licence funds the BBC and that is not "infested with ads".

@tauon honestly tv license money should just be a part of council tax and i think there are talks to make it like that

@hugh @byte yet it still applies if you don’t watch the bbc

@tauon @byte I think you boosted my guess about the historical reason for that?

Licence fee reform and the BBC Charter is very political. The BBC has a whole load of other output which is solely funded by the licence fee (and BBC Worldwide).

How does one fund that without the licence fee? Move it into general taxation? Both the BBC and the government hate that idea.

Subscription models probably don't raise enough revenue.

That's why this situation continues; there's not a good solution.

@aetios @byte @tauon No, not within the UK. It's prohibited from doing so, as it's funded by the licence fee.

If one were to move the BBC's funding onto the government's balance sheet, how's it to be paid for?

@tauon oi mate you got a loicense for that tv?

wait, how strict is the definition of "live tv" online? like is watching a twitch streamer tv? is watching nhk world on youtube, a transaction that does not involve any uk funding, tv?

@tauon what ?

@aetios @byte @tauon @hugh yeah to me it seems needlessly bureaucratic to bother all citizens with a separate tax for tv

@eloy @aetios @byte @tauon It's optional, you don't have to pay it!

This is *exactly* why it's done this way, to avoid increasing headline rates of tax.

It also gives the BBC greater independence from the whims of government, which is why they'd hate for it to be fully funded from taxation.

(Iirc, there used to be a grant which topped up the licence fee. This was reduced/abolished in the 2010s but I don't recall the precise details)

@aetios @byte @tauon @hugh tho it makes sense to me that you don't want to give parliament buget control over the org that has the task to control the same people

@aetios @hugh @byte @eloy @tauon you don’t have to pay it but they will send people to your house employing scare tactics

@aetios @eloy @hugh @byte @sam £140 something

@aetios @byte @sam @eloy @tauon @hugh I assume it's like public transit fines, where the enforcement costs more than the amount being enforced but nobody cares because it was never about cost efficiency, it was about the power dynamics

@joepie91 Enforcement of tickets in public transport is cost efficient because the personnel has more duties than just checking tickets and writing out fines.

@BlackDragon In the handful of cases where someone has actually bothered to run (and publish) the numbers, this hasn't shown to be true. And that's not surprising - unless the additional responsibilities are fully passive (and in the vast majority of cases they aren't), every minute spent checking tickets is a minute not spent on those other responsibilities, and therefore some amount of extra capacity that needs to be hired. One way or another, the enforcement still doesn't pay for itself.

@joepie91 @BlackDragon yeah this is why a lot of the countries with similar systems just started asserting that everyone falls under it unless they can prove they do not

@joepie91 @BlackDragon getting the money wouldn’t really be their problem anymore because they sell it off to some debt collectors